Overview

An Eastern Caribbean music festival as a window on social change /> />Every year, on a weekend before Christmas, the small Caribbean island of Carriacou, Grenada, holds its annual Parang Festival, featuring concerts, performances of local quadrille dance, Hosannah band (a cappella singing) competitions, and the climactic string band competition. Born in the years leading up to Grenada's 1979 Socialist Revolution, the Parang Festival today offers a vehicle for Carriacouans to articulate and assert a progressive understanding of local cultural identity as well as a regional, pan-Caribbean belonging. Rebecca S. Miller examines the varying impact that factors such as cultural ambivalence, globalization, and technology have had on the performance of Carriacou's folk and traditional music and dance forms. Using archival sources and current ethnography, she illuminates the enduring significance of the Parang Festival to illustrate the social and political history of Carriacou as well as this culture's contemporary process of modernization. The book includes a web link allowing the reader to listen to a variety of musical examples.

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9780819501486

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Reviews

"""In this first ever study of Caribbean string band music, Rebecca Miller deftly weaves together political history and contemporary ethnography. Using Carriacou's Parang Festival as a lens, Miller examines issues of cultural identity in the context of political upheaval and globalization.""--Michael Largey, associate professor and Chair of Musicology, Michigan State University ""Rebecca Miller has taken full advantage of her lengthy fieldwork--and her own experience as one of the only living exponents of Canute Caliste's style of violin playing--to create the most complete study ever made of this historically important tradition.""--Donald R. Hill, professor of Africana/Latino studies and anthropology, SUNY College at Oneonta ""Miller herself is led to the music of Carriacou via the streets of New York, where she first encounters the diasporic sounds of this community. Indeed, it is Miller's own reflexive voice that is one of the most compelling aspects of the study. Situating herself as an outsider but also as a musician, she is able to draw the reader into her own process of discovery and doubt in conducting the study. Miller's engagement with the music and the community of Carriacou artfully comments on the repeating process of constructing an Afro-Caribbean identity through festival and song.""--Solimar Otero, Professor, Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Indiana University ""Rebecca S. Miller's ethnographic precision, her experience of performing with a variety of musicians in Carriacou, and her detailed musical transcriptions and analyses enable her to capture the complexity of musical form and meaning in this island community. Moreover, her enthusiasm for her subject matter and her crystal-clear prose will make the book a pleasure for students and general readers, as well as specialists.""--Stephen Stuempfle, Journal of Folklore Research ""Carriacou String Band Serenade is a valuable contribution to the ethnographic literature on music in the Caribbean. Overall, this book provides an evocative ethnographic portrait of historically important musical traditions, many of which are on the brink of disappearance or transformation.""--Tina K. Ramnarine, Ethnomusicology ""Adapted and modified to fit local circumstances, string band music provides a worthwhile tool for studying some of the Caribbean's cultural and social complexities. Despite its potential relevance, however, the music has received only nominal research, making Rebecca S. Miller's Carriacou String Band Serenade - the first-ever book on the topic - a welcome addition to existing scholarship. Her thoughtful approach to the materials and detail of research make this book a particularly strong and exciting contribution.""--Nanette de Jong, New West Indian Guide"

Author Information

REBECCA S. MILLER is professor of music at Hampshire College, a public sector folklorist/documentary maker, and an accomplished traditional fiddler.

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